On the hunt for good Jersey pizza

Last night, my fiance and I made a crucial decision that millions of Americans make every day -- we chose to forego making dinner (and by that I mean she chose to postpone making yummy white bean soup while I merely postponed setting the table), and opted for local Montclair pizza.

Pizza, soda, American Idol results, 23 DVR-pocketed hours of Law & Order, a fresh box of Count Chocula, and the warm company of five cats: the makings of a beautiful night.

But when I brought the pizza home, we were very disappointed. Our typical pizzeria, which will go unnamed, has a solid community reputation, but the pizza was sub-par. Much like the pizza we remember from grade-school cafeterias, the sauce was alright, but the cheese lay on top like a thick blanket. The top was undercooked, no brown spots at all -- what the experts call minimal "char". It also became quite gluey toward the end, like a mozzarella stick left in the back of a minivan. It's as if they fired it up it in an Easy-Bake oven.

Those of you who wish to change the channel at this time to explore the typically-blogged minutiae of Corzinian politics, go ahead. For the rest of you, let's take a moment to talk pizza.

Everyone has one favorite pizza place, and at least one or two more that are merely okay, but feature some compelling reason for patronage: it's close, the children inexplicably like it, you have a coupon, your uncle owns it...

At times, we've considered a pizza place located conveniently next door to our gym. What better way to reward spinning off 300 calories in half an hour than putting it all back on in ten minutes? The place cooks their pies well enough, but the sauce is so sweet you wonder how many licks it will take to get to the center -- a one... a two... Also, there's more to making "Chicken Parmagiana pizza" than throwing breaded chicken strips aboard a cheese pie.

After polishing off the less-than-mediocre pizza-like thing, we decided enough was enough; this is NEW JERSEY. More than enough Italians emigrated to our neck of the woods to have at least one good pizza-maker in town.

We strategized. We Googled. We Mapquested. My fiance held her head whilst wracking her brain, "I remember this girl I knew in Englewood who was a big foodie and she used to drive to some place in Bloomfield for pizza..."

It was a start.

My girlfriend remembers great pizza where she went to school in Pittsburgh, and once proudly took me there on a pizza tour. She's right -- it was good. You're going to think I'm crazy, but my all-time favorite pizza is served at Don Pepi Pizza in New York's Penn Station: nice mix of cheese and sauce, yummy sauce, good "char", chewy crust, easily foldable. I can always rationalize a "snack" there if I have 10 minutes before my train leaves.

Some people like brick-oven pizzas; others opt for the pizza-like things they serve at California Pizza Kitchen or Pizzeria Uno. Tasty options at both places, but no self-respecting Ray's-fed, hands-only Northeastern pizza connoisseur considers that "pizza pizza."

My kids like a particular brick-oven place in Maplewood, while I prefer a nearby teen haunt that features cheeseburger pizza with french fries (strictly for looking if you're over 18) and eggplant parmagiana pizza (done right). You can imagine who wins that battle.

Obviously, we've barely scratched the upper crust of pizzerias in town. My partner in parmagiana and I are going to test many more, so if you see two hungry people coming into your local place asking to split a single slice, don't bother us -- we don't mix dinner with pleasure, and I've still got to see if my boy David Cook survives another week on Idol.